Chapter Seventeen

‘I don’t know, really.’ A few golden oats rest on Lydia’s neon-green floaty scarf as she talks and eats. The scarf isn’t really effective in keeping out the November cold but it’s very good at showing off her screen-printing skills – this textile jewellery thing is actually a lot more developed than I first thought. The scarf has a repeating pattern of skeleton birds flying all over it. It’s frankly, weirdly mesmerising. ‘The festival has, like, something to do with eggs and branches of trees and braided hair. And they sing a lot. Anyway, it was very important so she went back for it.’

‘But where? Where did Matilda go back to?’

Lydia shrugs. ‘Don’t know. I don’t like to pry: she’s very reserved, and snappy. But thanks a mill for coming to help out, Smells. Isn’t this fun?’

I look up and down Portobello Market. I look at the ground sparkling with frost and my blue fingers. I look at the zero shoppers crowding round us.

‘Super fun, love. I mean, I think this tingling feeling is fun. Or hypothermia.’

‘Come here then!’ Lyds runs her hands all over me in order to give some friendly friction heat. ‘Ooooh baby!’ She’s turning heads amongst the seventeen other people in the market, and actually it is helping. I’m warming up through the power of blush.

When she steps back, she asks, ‘So how’s worky life, anyway? You said you had that new intern bird starting.’

‘Yup, she’s in. And she’s pretty nifty. I mean, she’s always there early, she stays late, comes up with some good ideas.’

‘Does she make you coffee?’

‘Yes, she makes me coffee.’

‘Fucking hell, Smells, you’re living the dream! Sounds cushy to me, having an assistant who fetches you drinks while you’re building your business empire.’ She paws a hand at her delicate throat and coughs lightly.

‘Man, you are so subtle. Shall I get us some coffee then?’ It’s only 10 a.m. but I’m on my third cup. We had to set up at 7 a.m. Not sure I’ve been up this early on a Saturday since I got married and the make-up woman insisted on starting on me six hours before the wedding. It meant I had to greet all my bridesmaids by saying, ‘Hi! Isn’t it exciting? Oh my God, I’m getting married! DON’T TOUCH MY FACE! DON’T TOUCH MY FACE!’

‘Let’s push the boat out and have a hot choc and one of your scones, eh hun? That flapjack has made me greedy hungry. Hope the cream hasn’t frozen in its tub. Ah, the life of a fashion entrepreneur.’ Lydia always pronounces ‘entrepreneur’ in a sexy French accent, and it always makes me laugh.

Later, I toddle back from the tea stall with our burning-hot styrofoam cups and rearrange some Scrabble tile necklaces while Lyds doles out the scone rations. (I dug out some hotel jam pots I’d made Pete bring home from a business trip to Swindon. I think on some level he is still annoyed about that.) I’m holding up one necklace that says CANT SPEEL and comparing it to another that reads PROPER NAME. I give PROPER NAME prominence on the blood-red felt while Lyds is fiddling away on her iPhone.

‘Sexting, are we?’

‘Nooooooo!’ She bats her lashes at me. ‘I’m updating the company blog, which is, in turn, updating the Twitter feed and the Facebook group. Matilda got us all set up and some nice banner bits designed and now we are harnessing a community!’ She shouts this last bit, like a maniacal preacher. ‘We’ve got five hundred likes, and they’re not all from friends either. I think I might, like, make some money from the stall this month. It’s an exhilarating feeling, paying your phone bill on time.’

I give her a high five and then a hug. ‘And there I was, assuming you were being a dirty sex pervert again.’

‘Well, obviously I’m still finding time for that,’ she cackles, wiggling her eyebrows and nodding to her right. Down the way, Guy the potato guy is stoking his little oven thing and sending sly looks Lydia’s way.

‘So is Joe a total no-go?’

‘Joe being …?’

‘The baking love god? The chocolate milkshake you couldn’t wait to drink? Chelsea buns of steel? The guy I went to the baking class for, so you could meet him.’

Lydia twists her mouth over to one side and still looks elfin-cute. ‘Oooops. Sorry, have you been going all this time? You can totally sack it off now. Though, your flapjacks and scones have both gone up a notch, I must say.’

‘I put sour cream in the scone mix, but don’t go off-piste. Are you sure you don’t even want one drink with Joe? He’s tall and funny, very sweet, especially about his little niece … and his baking is really improving. The first week he nearly cremated his Victoria sponge and now he’s fitting pie lids with the best of them. He’s a catch.’

‘Why don’t you buy him a drink then?’ Lydia guffaws and nudges me in the ribs. ‘Sounds like you’ve got yourself a little married lady crush.’

The words ‘little married lady’, in any context, are medically proven to really tick me off. I snap back, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I can appreciate that a guy is attractive without planning on jumping his bones. They don’t confiscate your eyes when you get your marriage licence, you know.’

‘So you are admitting he’s fit?’ Lydia keeps poking the bruise.

‘Yes! But you were the one who thought that first and sent me to the bloody classes! That was the whole point. Don’t make me out to be some married letch now. Look, I can say Jon Hamm is fit and you think that’s OK. But if I said, “Oh, I don’t even a smidge think that Jon Hamm is the physical embodiment of all things sexual because I am married now” you would have me declared legally insane. Or legally dead. It’s not weird that I think Joe is an attractive bloke. He is. And if you’re not bothered, I’ll set him up with another friend …’ I taper off, twiddling with a ring made of varnished jelly sweets.

‘Hey hey hey!’ Lyds shuffles round the table to me, ‘Don’t go that far. I saw him first, after all. And things with Guy are good but it’s early doors. You never know when I might discover that he collects model trains or doesn’t own a telly. Friends?’ Her bottom lip curls out in a pathetic little show that always always wins me over.

‘Yes,’ I huff back, just as my bag starts to ring from underneath the table. As I answer it, I swear Lydia is humming ‘Part-Time Lover’ under her breath.

‘Oh hi, Mum.’

‘Hello love. I’ve just had some lovely news! Mike’s coming back for a week. He’s been asked to speak at a digital conference in Bradford, so Estelle thought they should come over and make a holiday of it. So we’ll get to see the twins! Isn’t that lovely?’

‘Ooooh, yes,’ I coo with practiced conviction. I worshipped my little nephew and niece when they were born four years ago, but somewhere along the way – maybe after they moved to Estelle’s French hometown or maybe because their twinness became more pronounced as they got older – something about their perfect neatness and almost-mirror image has started to unnerve me. I mean, it’s not Village of the Damned level, not even close, but I don’t think a four-year-old should come out of a spaghetti bolognese dinner looking cleaner than Cliff Richard’s autobiography. Let alone a four-year-old that’s been sitting next to another four-year-old with the God-given right to unleash stain hell that all children have.

I still love the heck out of them; I still go completely bonkers at Christmas and on their birthday when it comes to buying them overcomplicated toys. But I prefer someone else to be in the room with me when they come to visit. Just in case.

I try and FaceTime with Mike every couple of weeks to say hi and catch up. As he’s a web design guy, he can work anywhere and his French wife couldn’t ignore her cravings for ‘real’ cheese and the rural life she grew up with, so they sold their Brixton flat and bought, in exchange, what is basically a huge villa in the South of France. It’s like actually being in an episode of Relocation, Relocation. Except that Pete and I eventually have to admit it’s not our real life and go back to eating rubbish cheese in a smoggy, expensive, awesome city after a holiday with them.

‘So you’ll come for Sunday lunch then? With Pete? Oh good,’ Mum chortles on without me even replying. ‘And if you could bake something for pudding I’d appreciate it. I want to make sure I have enough time to get the jus just right. Last time there was definitely too much red wine. It nearly took the enamel off your dad’s teeth. That reminds me, I need to clean the loo. Bye love!’

And just like that, it appears our Sunday won’t involve a lie-in, bagels and a Take Me Out catch-up after all. Oh well, a good excuse to bake. I could try a chocolate and raspberry roulade if I feel like I’ve got the balls. I once did profiteroles on a Mike and Estelle visit and Estelle even lifted an eyebrow in appreciation. She’s the reason Mum gets obsessed with gravy. (Or, if Estelle is visiting, ‘jus’ as Mum thinks we must call it, so that Estelle will know what we mean. Regardless that Estelle speaks better English than my dad.) Estelle can’t help it, but she inspires panic, anxiety and overachieving in others. She can’t help it because she can’t help being beautiful, poised, kind, unbelievably cool and naturally intelligent in every satiny thread of her being. I could talk about her hair for, like, months. Pete once had to tell me it was time to change the subject when she wore her deep brown hair in an amazing topknot one Christmas. ‘But how does she get it right up there?’ I asked, incredulous. ‘Right on the top! Like a yolk in a fried egg! And no wisps coming out, no lumpy bits at the back—’

Estelle is not, in any Dickensian way her name might suggest, cruel or mean or exacting or nasty. She doesn’t want us to dance around her like lovesick bumble bees, trying to prove our hexagon of honey is better than anyone else’s. She just wants us to sit, be normal, have tea. But we can’t. I have to wear my very coolest clothes, my Mum has her hair blow-dried and Dad leans against the fireplace, like a balding Cary Grant. Then we get out the cafetière and pontificate about politics. It’s exhausting. But we can’t stop. She’s cool and French! We have so much to apologise for, even as she steps over the threshold! Forgive us for being paltry ros bifs, please!

I think my brother’s natural laissez-faire (sorry, couldn’t help it after Estelle thoughts) was what in fact hooked such a gorgeous and sharp woman. He’s one of the few people who doesn’t act like Helen Mirren and Frank Sinatra’s long-lost lovechild has just walked through the door. He rarely gives a rat’s ass about anything and when he started dating Estelle he applied all that laziness, lack of attention to detail and sleepiness that past girlfriends had come to know and loathe. But for her, it was a refreshing change. Sacré bleu! she must have thought (or perhaps not). For in under a year they were engaged, three months after that married and a year after that strolling nonchalant as you like out of King’s Hospital with a baby each. Job lot. And my brother barely broke a sweat through any of it.

A trendy mum strides past the stall – legs in thigh-high camel leather boots, furry gilet clasped together with one hand while the other pushes along the NASA-designed stroller with ease. A very fat baby eyeballs me innocently as they pass.

Dark chocolate and raspberry roulade. Definitely.